Excerpt from Rachel Berry: Lima Loser to Broadway
by Alex Ryzlin Gold
Summary: Written for Pezberry week, day four – Celebrity Couple. Rachel's tell-all autobiography explains about her first true love.


**Title:** Excerpt from _Rachel Berry: Lima Loser to Broadway Babe_

**Author: **Alex Ryzlin Gold

**Fandom: **Glee

**Rating: **Teen for minor bad language**  
Disclaimer: **I own nothing**  
Warnings/Spoilers: **Minor spoilers for season three mentioned in passing.**  
Parings:** Rachel/Santana, past Rachel/various people, past Santana/Brittany  
**Summary: **Written for Pezberry week, day four – Celebrity Couple. Rachel's tell-all autobiography explains about her first true love.

Chapter Eight: Maria and Anita

By now you'd have read about Finn, my first boyfriend and you've read about Jesse, and about Noah, when I was back in high school. You'd have read about Charles and Kelly from NYADA and Gretchen, Harrison and Frankie from early in my career, and the subsequent time I spent apparently not dating anyone. But you haven't read about my first love. No one has, because all the biographies are wrong when they say that Finn was my first love. He was a nice boy, truly, but my heart had been taken by another, years earlier.

Her name was Santana Lopez. We grew up together, and lived next door to each other until the summer before high school started. Santana's father got a promotion at the hospital, and they moved to Lima Heights Adjacent. Santana and I still saw each other that summer, when she wasn't at cheerleading camp but it wasn't nearly as often as before.

It was at cheerleading camp that Santana met Brittany S. Pierce. While this chapter is about the relationship between Santana and me, Brittany will come up quite a lot. After that first camp, Brittany and Santana became best friends, and they both influenced each other. I think I have to describe Brittany as I saw her for people to truly understand how much she affected Santana and me.

To those that know her, it means re-writing everything you thought you knew about Brittany. Most people thought Brittany was the sweetest girl in the world, which, to be fair, she was. Most of the time. All the other times could be put down to Santana being a bad influence, right? Actually, no, they really couldn't. To be blunt, when Brittany wanted to, she could be a real bitch. She knew how to throw verbal barbs so that they would have the most effect, and she knew how to break a person into pieces. That's not something she learnt from Santana. It's something Santana learnt from her. To those of you that I went to high school with and remember Brittany as the easy, air-headed cheerleader that always followed Santana and Quinn around like a lost puppy; it was an act. She's currently working at Yale as a researcher, and occasionally a guest lecturer in the department of physics.

Santana and Brittany brought out the best and worst of each other. They were both bitchier, and calmer when the other was around. They became known as _BrittanyandSantana,_ as a single entity, because they were never apart, at least not in public. In public they held pinkies, and no one said a word, because if you did, Santana would hit you, and she hit hard. I'll admit that I was jealous of Brittany. She got to hang out with my girl, and it was _normal_. At the same time, I was happy Brittany was there because from the first moment they met Brittany was helping Santana accept herself.

Santana was everything I should have resented in high school. Popular, cheerleader, a bitch, and on several occasions she was my tormentor. I was everything that she should have hated in high school. Diva, glee club co-captain, loud, and I really was annoying. All these years later I will admit it, but I certainly wouldn't have then.

But despite the 'shoulds', we never hated each other - at least, I never hated her. In my worst moments I resented Santana, but I never hated her. She certainly played the part at school and no one but Brittany knew that we were dating. Then again, Brittany Pierce was a genius, and you couldn't hide anything from her. We tried, and failed.

Dating Santana was surprisingly easy in some ways. While we were dating she never bullied me. It was always one of the jocks, or a different Cheerio. Santana even went so far as to paint a target of Jacob Ben-Israel's back so that I would get a break every now and again. She was attentive, and she'd always have something to cheer me up with when I had a bad day. That was all while we were dating. When we weren't Santana did nothing to protect me, but I didn't expect her to. I was the one that broke her heart, after all.

Santana was never the bravest person when it came to being different, and in small town Lima, it was very easy to stray from the norm. She strayed just by existing. It retrospect, there was a very small percentage of the population that didn't fit into the white middle class mold, and Santana, Hispanic, upper class was part of that small percentage. Had she come out as a lesbian, I think the collective population of Lima would have had aneurisms. She tried her hardest to be normal, and generally she succeeded. Back then I didn't understand it, and that was when I started to resent her. Now I understand. When you have this deep, dark secret that could rip your world apart, you can barely admit it to yourself, let alone other people.

That was why I broke up with Santana. She was popular, and I was a loser who had slushies thrown in my face on a daily basis. At the end of the day I knew she cared for me, but those feelings were over shadowed by her fear. Santana had the power to protect me from everyone and everything, but she didn't. I used to think she was selfish, but again, I don't anymore. She was struggling to balance everything and she _couldn't _protect me because she didn't know how. At the time I wanted someone to protect me in public, not just behind closed doors. I wanted someone who was proud of me and who would hold my hand while at school. So I dated Finn. You all know how well that went.

All of that was in the past, and it's pretty much stayed there ever since Santana and I met randomly three years after high school and took the time to discuss everything that had happened between us. There's a reason I haven't gone in depth into the relationship Santana and I had back in high school, at least not as in depth as my other relationships back then, and that is because my high school years were just the beginning, and as far as I'm concerned, they were just practice. I told you my deepest feelings about everything to do with Finn, Jesse and Noah, but it's a lot harder with Santana. It's also a lot simpler. The year and a half I secretly dated Santana before dumping her and dating Finn was the happiest I ever was at high school, followed closely by my senior year in which Santana and I were at the least, civil with each other.

Senior year was also the worst year for me. Santana finally beat her fear and let other people know she was a lesbian. Not that she had much choice after being outed to the whole state of Ohio (don't ask), but she still did it. Sadly, it wasn't with me, which pretty much sums up why it was the worst year of high school. It was with Brittany, and really, I can't thank her enough for it, even though at the time she was horribly bitchy to me and made sure that it was clear that Santana was hers. Everything she did for Santana made Santana a stronger, braver person to the point that Santana would openly kiss Brittany in between classes, and they even went to prom together. They broke up shortly after graduation when Brittany headed to Harvard, and Santana escaped to LA to pursue acting. Everyone thought that they would be heart broken, but they weren't.

It was years later, after Brittany had hosted a Glee reunion and forced Santana and I to share a room due to lack of space and the reasoning that we were the last to arrive at her holiday home in Amsterdam, that I found out that they had never loved each other in a more than friends way. Being forced to share a room was what brought Santana and I back together. That's where Brittany being a genius comes in. It turned out that everyone else had been informed that the reunion started a day earlier and lasted a week, when Santana and I had been told it started a day later and lasted two weeks. Brittany had made sure we'd end up sharing a room, and then enforced that we stayed in her holiday house practically alone for a week while she visited family. The only other company we had was the maid who came by every two days.

Santana and I had already reconnected and gotten over our problems with each other by that point, but we hadn't really kept in touch. Much to Brittany's joy our forced interaction had the desired effect, and we left Amsterdam as not quite friends, not quite girlfriends. It took another year, but Santana and I finally started dating. We both received letters from Brittany telling us that we took our sweet time. I'm pretty sure Brittany had both of our apartments bugged.

And that's where I'm going to leave you. As I'm writing this, I simply can't tell you everything about our relationship because we're still dating. This is my future and as much as I love my fans (I really do love you) I'm not going to tell you everything. Santana and I do appreciate some privacy.

I will tell you one more thing though. I know you've been wondering ever since I said her name was 'Santana Lopez', but yes, I _am_ talking about Santana Lopez, singer/songwriter/actor extraordinaire, who I just recently starred along side of in my latest Broadway play.

To all the Lima losers who threw slushies at me; I hope you're jealous that I get to tap that regularly. You should be. Santana hopes you're jealous too.


End file.
